… 8 to 10 young volunteers meeting at the right time at the right place. Some were looking for a sustainable way to serve food for their volunteer driven café called Retro (the first non profit organisation, who invested in the Rub & Stub project and made it possible to start up to begin with). Some of us had worked in industrial kitchens during study years and had seen a lot of food waste and just wanted to figure out, how some of that food could be picked up systematically before it is beeing discarted. Not only to put focus on the food waste issue, but also to present a positive, solution focused way of handling your groseries. A lot of people, politicians and NGOs point out the problems with „first world“ food waste. You do paralyze people if you keep giving them extreme numbers and overwhelmingly large problems with the market and society. We want to point out some of the small, simple and practical everyday routuines – and on the longterm a basic mindset – that can make everyone see the change in their own kitchen and shopping style regarding surplus food.

… that everything is driven by volunteers who wants to spend their night off from work or studying to help inspiring our guests to grasp a more sustainable food culture.

… very positive! They come in all ages and „classes“. From young students to politicians, musicians playing elsewhere in the culture house and tourists just dropping in coincidentally. Of course a lot visit us because they’re fan of the concept – almost everyone in the world can relate to the stupidity of wasting perfectly fine food. It is so very universal to us as human beings to care about food somehow – even though we don’t know at all how to cook ourselves. But in the restaurant we always have to be sure that guests are aware about the concept. About volunteers serving to them. Otherwise we’ll get complaints about for example „small portions“ until we tell that we want people to be able to eat it all and then ask for free refill if they want more.

… not get any surplus food at all. Because there wouldn’t be any. Every food waste concept is just „symptom treatment“, but we keep doing it to highlight the food waste issue and create debate and a willingness to change consumption habits or demand a different food system. We do it by showing, how little you have to think differently.

…  the „Putin butter“ – Butter with Russian print on, donated to us due to sanctions against Russia. We’ve had a deal with a fishmonger as well, donating luxury stuff as virgin lobster, mussels and so on. And a bureau trying to brand a new invasive fish species in Denmark where we had to invent how at all to cook this weird and tiny litlle fish that none has eaten before in Denmark – but it’s very popular in Italy! And then we get a lot of potatos which are really fine, but when the shops sell „new potatos“ during spring and summer time, customers expect them to be very petite. It’s just because the potatos are harvested early. If the are harvested „too late“, they grow bigger than the conformal size and cannot be sold, even though it’s the same. Then producers toss’em all. It really illustrates how ridiculous the food market has become.

… maybe something alike will pop up. It needs to be bottom up driven by local volunteer’s passionate interest in the project. We’re nothing without them. It is a very fine balancing between volunteer leading and wanting to say YES and do more when we’re invited. But one step at a time. We need a solid concept and routine, and if some volunteers – we have a lot of exchange students – feel like opening another eatery someplace else, we’d love to share our experience.

… none have any surplus food anymore. Because we’ve changed the circle of the food system, the way we produce, transport, sell, cook and eat.